OECD unemployment rates show long swings which dominate shorter business cycle components and these long swings show a range of common patterns. Using a panel of 21 OECD countries 1960-2002, we estimate the common factor that drives unemployment by the first principal component. This factor has...

OECD unemployment rates show long swings which dominate shorter business cycle components and these long swings show a range of common patterns. Using a panel of 21 OECD countries 1960-2002, we estimate the common factor that drives unemployment by the first principal component. This factor has...

OECD unemployment rates show long swings which dominate shorter business cycle components and these long swings show a range of common patterns. Using a panel of 21 OECD countries 1960-2002, we estimate the common factor that drives unemployment by the first principal component. This factor has...

The literature on unemployment dynamics is mainly concerned with the nature and impact of shocks to unemployment. In this paper we use OECD unemployment data to infer the nature of these shocks using factor analysis. We find that two Principal Components can account for a large part of the...

We consider the hypothesis that a common factor, global expected returns, drives unemployment and investment in 21 OECD countries over the period 1960-2002. We investigate this hypothesis using a panel-factor augmented-vector autoregression (FAVAR). We first estimate the common factors of...

We adjust current account surpluses and deficits of 57 countries in the period 2005-2009 for differences in the age structure of their populations and find that these differences can account for a significant part of the variation in the data. Among the large countries we find that the...

We adjust current account surpluses and deficits of 57 countries in the period 2005–2009 for differences in the age structure of their populations and find that these differences can account for a significant part of the variation in the data. Among the large countries we find that the...

The means-testing of age pension programs allows governments to control the receipt of pension benefits (extensive margin) and the benefit level (intensive margin). We investigate how the presence of the extensive margin influences the trade-off between protecting the poorer elderly and the...

This paper solves for optimal international portfolio choice in the presence of liquidity constraints and undiversifiable labor income risk. Optimal portfolios are internationally diversified while positive correlation between domestic stock market returns and permanent labor income shocks can...

This paper discusses broad trends in labour force participation and part-time employment across different age groups since the Great Recession and uses provincial data to identify changes related to population aging, cyclical effects and other factors. The main population age groups examined are...